Profiling Primary School Teachers in Relation to Art Teaching

This paper contributes to the on-going debate about specialisation and teaching art in primary schools. Moreover it provides a starting point for further research and the design of in-service training that responds to the different needs and attitudes of primary school teachers in relation to teaching art. This is done by investigating several profiles of teachers who teach art in primary schools in Cyprus. It describes five profiles of teachers, which emerged from analysing data from pupils (questionnaire and interview data) and teachers (interview data) and thus brings a fresh insight to the learning-teaching situation. There are two profiles of art specialist teachers, named as artist-teacher and specialist-teacher, and three profiles of non-art specialist teachers, named as enthusiastic, disappointed, and indifferent non-specialist. The most effective teacher in the pupils' eyes is the specialist-teacher, who integrates more successfully than the others their subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of learners and knowledge of the environmental conditions.